1 May 1999Liberal Reforms and Community Responses in Mexico1byAlain de Janvry, Céline Dutilly, Carlos Muñoz-Piña, and Elisabeth SadouletUniversity of California at BerkeleyI. From state-led to community-led governance1.1. The ejido before the 1992 reformsRural communities have, in Mexico, an extraordinarily important, and yet largely unrecognized,role in influencing the way in which a huge endowment of natural resources is used and local public goodsare delivered to a majority of the rural population. By contrast to Africa and North East Asia (Hayami andPlatteau, 1998), these communities generally do not have their roots in tribal or ancestral village origins.They are instead mostly creation of the state, product of the political settlement that followed 10 years ofpeasant-led armed revolution. This settlement led to formation of the ejido communities as defined in theconstitution of 1917. In some cases, land that had been expropriated from indigenous communities byexpansion of the haciendas was restituted, giving a tribal basis to the ejido communities. But in the vastmajority of cases, communities were created by pulling together in ejidos the former workers ofexpropriated haciendas or ad-hoc groups of rural households demanding access to land. A dual form ofproperty rights was thus created, covering today each approximately half of the Mexican territory. On theone hand, a sector of private farms with a ceiling on land ownership equivalent to 100 hectares of irrigatedland (the “pequeñas propriedades”). On the other hand, a social sector, generically referred to as the ejidosector, that includes indigenous communities with restituted lands and new ejido communities created bythe reform, with ejido communities outnumbering indigenous communities 15 to 1. In this ejido sector, allland is owned by the community. Land in ejidos is also accessed under a dual system of land rights:individual plots to which ejidatario households have access in usufruct; and common property resources(CPR) to which all ejidatarios have access as regulated by the community.To understand how the ejido community was organized to manage its affairs, it is important torelate this to the purposes of the 1917 reforms (Gordillo, de Janvry, and Sadoulet, 1998). Because the landreform occurred as the outcome of a peasant-led revolution that left one million dead, creation of the ejidosector had both political and economic objectives that would eventually run at cross purposes. The politicalobjective was to contain peasant demands within the institutionalized political process and to incorporatethem as clients of the ruling political party. This was done by using corporatist organizations, such as theNational Confederation of Peasants (CNC), itself a part of the ruling political party, to mediate the relationbetween peasants and the state. The state thus had a strong pro-active role in managing the political life ofthe community. The economic objective was to organize production more efficiently than in the hacienda,particularly for the delivery of staple foods to the urban sector while the private sector was specializing inhigh value crops. Land reform beneficiaries were, however, considered unable to manage their owneconomic affairs, and they were thus placed, like infants, under the tutelage of the state. This applied notonly to the delivery of public goods in the community and the management of common property resources,but also to production in individual plots. On those, access to the market and to essential services such ascredit and insurance was mediated by community leadership, itself under strong control of the state. Whiletutelage could have been a rapid transition toward independent management of community affairs,submission to state control was maintained over the years and it took waiting until the liberal reforms of1992 for this to happen. To achieve both political and economic objectives, the communities were thusplaced under strong control of the state. 1 Chapter 12 in Aoki, M. and Y. Hayami (eds) Communities and Markets in Economic Development,Oxford University Press, 20012 May 1999Governance in ejidos was organized through three internal bodies that reflected this main mise ofthe state (Baitennmann, 1998).1. The general assembly. This was the highest authority in the ejido, constituted of all officialmembers (ejidatarios) in the ejido. Meetings were to be held not less than once a month, with decisionstaken on a majority vote. Decisions concerned internal rules and regulations of the ejido, election of themembers of the other two internal bodies, authorization and regulation of production and marketingdecisions, resolution of disputes, and changes in ejido membership and land allocation. Whenever issues ofaccess to land or production were to be discussed, a representative of the Secretariat of Agrarian Reform(SRA) had to be present.2. The executive board, composed of six elected members under the leadership of a president.While elected by the assembly, this president could exercise considerable influence over ejido affairs.Because of the importance of political clientelism in accessing public goods and services, the president ofthe executive board also had close linkages with the ruling political party.3. The oversight council, also with six elected members, in charge of providing checks andbalances in the performance of the assembly and the executive board.Not only was the state thus importantly present in the internal management of community affairs,SRA regulations additionally severely constrained what communities and ejidatarios were allowed to do.For instance, ejidatarios had to work their lands directly as they were not allowed to hire wage labor. Theycould not rent the land or sell it. Absences from the ejido for more than two years led to loss of the right toland. Ejidatarios could not transfer their land plots to more than one heir to prevent atomization of theland.2 The state was also involved in ejido arbitration matters since family controversies and boundaryconflicts with other ejidos or private farms had to be settled in administrative tribunals under the authorityof the SRA. Access to credit was obtained from the state agricultural bank through the ejido, notindividually, with all ejidatarios co-liable for the total amount of credit received. Credit was granted forspecific crops with specific agronomic practices, leaving little leeway